Secret Service

The Secret Service has left its central command post inside Trump Tower after an argument between the agency and the Trump Organization over the lease agreement for the space. While the Secret Service previously placed its supervisors and backup agents one floor below the president’s apartment, the Washington Post reported that in early July, the agents were relegated to a trailer on the sidewalk. Although President Trump has not been to his eponymous tower since he was inaugurated in January, the Secret Service still treats Trump Tower as the president’s permanent residence.

White House North, Dump Tower–call it what you will, but Trump Tower has been causing a major headache for the city ever since the President Elect announced that he hopes to spend weekends in his penthouse at the Midtown tower and that wife Melania and son Barron will continue to reside there during his presidency. Initial estimates put the cost of protecting the building at $1 million a day, but after City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Council Member Dan Garodnick launched a petition last week demanding that the federal government cover these costs, Mayor de Blasio has officially asked for a total of “$35 million to cover the 73 days stretching from the election on Nov. 8 to Jan. 20, inauguration day,” reports the Post, a lesser amount of roughly $480,000 a day.

Plans are underway to turn what the New York Times calls “White House North” into an armed bunker as the president-elect’s family defers D.C.. As 6sqft reported last week, Donald Trump has said he’d like his family to remain in Trump Tower, though the gilded Fifth Avenue fortress that Trump, wife Melania and son Barron call home is particularly difficult to secure. The round-the-clock protection the family has been receiving from the NYPD has come at a cost to the city of over $1 million a day. Now, the New York Post reports that the Secret Service is in talks with the Trump Organization over plans to occupy two floors of the 68-story tower. It’s standard policy for the federal agency to provide full protection for every president at their various homes–it cost around $2 million a year for the U.S. Coast Guard to protect George H. W. Bush’s estate in Kennebunkport, Maine during his presidency, for example. But in this instance taxpayers would be paying the incoming president’s own company for the space in a lease deal which could cost more than $3 million a year.